


Never Gonna Close Our Eyes

by Edwardina



Category: Glee
Genre: Exhibitionism, M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:12:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edwardina/pseuds/Edwardina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave has a summer job.  Sam needs money.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Gonna Close Our Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> There is money in exchange for something slightly sexual in this fic. If that bothers you, please don't read it. However, as prompted, there is no physical contact. It's purely voyeurism/exhibitionism.
> 
> I was prompted by an anon: _I couldn't help but think of Karofsky (post-Rumors) paying Sam to jerk off in front of him or let Dave watch him shower or something along those lines. Not actual prostitution (in my head they don't even touch) but something clearly sexualized._ Thanks for the prompt, anon, I really like writing Karofsky and Sam. Lady Gaga's "Summerboy" was basically my soundtrack while writing this so that's where the title is from.

Dave doesn't get much of a break over the summer.

It isn't Prom King-y at all, but he gets a part-time job bagging groceries at Save-n-Stuff.

It's his dad's idea; ever since Dave got suspended last year, his dad's been on his case about being responsible, and Dave can't even argue. He just wants everything to stay normal and for everyone to back off him.

Part of his paycheck goes toward his college fund and the other part he gets to blow on whatever he wants. It's kind of a bum deal, not even getting to keep all his own money, but the hours fill his summer up, and in a way, he's grateful to turn off his brain and listen to whatever muzak his manager puts on that day and ask "Paper or plastic, ma'am?" and bag food.

Football practice starts a month before school does, mid-July. The Beiste isn't a champ 'cause she lets them all get soft over the summer. Athletes need a head-start on the season. Likewise, the marching band has band camp, and they all march around blowing their horns noisily and playing the school fight song and something by KC and the Sunshine Band over and over and _over_. The football team runs laps and does drills in the morning sunshine, till the sun stretches toward the afternoon and it gets too hot. Then it's a half hour of weight conditioning and they're free to go.

Sometimes Dave sticks around and showers, but sometimes he just drives home sweaty for a little privacy. The team has its good days, where they're all unified and Hudson actually makes a decent catch or makes some good, not-gay points about winning and stuff, and its bad days where no one is safe from getting ragged on, shoved around, laughed at. On those days Beiste throws her hat down and yells for a while about sportsmanship and being team players and Dave sits on the bench staring at the empty space between Puckerman and that wheelchair kid.

That blond guy, Evans, the one who was quarterback for a while till he got royally tackled and his shoulder messed up, isn't showing up to practice. Some guys showed up a day or two late from family vacations and crap, but blondie just plain doesn't show. Try-outs for new players don't start till school starts, but the core team, all the guys from last year, have to come to practice. Dave guesses that means Sam Evans has quit the team.

A few days into practice, Dave is working through the afternoon. It's past old lady hour, which is when he does a lot of carrying bags out into the parking lot for people who shouldn't be driving their gigantic Oldsmobiles anymore, and veering into soccer mom hour, and he doesn't see who he's talking to until he's already asked, "Paper or plastic, ma'am?"

"Uh... paper."

Dave and Evans stare at each other for a few seconds. Evans has a slight frown for a second, probably because Dave just mistook him for a woman – well, his hair is friggin' long – but then he looks away, distracted by some kid.

"Stacy!" he says, dismayed. "I told you 'no.' We can't get that."

"But it's only two dollars."

"It's three dollars. See how it says 2.99? That really means three. But even if it was only two dollars, we don't have the money to buy that too."

Dave bags a row of cans coming down the conveyor belt. Alwayz Save cans with yellow wrappers are on them all – knock-off Spaghetti-o's and stuff, store brand cans of fruits and vegetables with big orange half-price stickers on them because they're like a day from their sell-by date, boxes of graham crackers with mangled-up corners. Everything Dave's bagging is the cheapest crap in the store, which is already a discount store. A lot of stuff sold there is basically the same as the brand name, but a lot of stuff is so much lower in quality, it's gross. Dave learned that the hard way when he bought one of those little tubs of macaroni that was supposed to be like Kraft Easy Mac but was actually inedible. Dave isn't even a picky eater. It just tasted like a yellow crayon.

"Please, Sammy?"

"I already told you 'no' earlier, Stacy. I told you to put it back."

"But Stevie gets to have ninja stars..."

"Stevie saved his money for them."

Dave bags seventy-nine-cent shampoo and shaving cream, no-name peanut butter, a bag of sad bruised apples, some flavorless stalks of celery, over-ripe bananas, a greasy-feeling box of raisins and a bag of the closest thing this store has to health-conscious bread. There's bags of fruity kid cereal. Frozen dinners in limp, cold cardboard boxes. Milk from some dairy no one's ever heard of, with scriptures from the Bible quoted on the label in a creepy way.

Evans hauls the little girl up into his arms and gives her a close face-to-face talking to.

"Not this time. Maybe next time, okay? We have to get just what was on the list Mom gave us. Stevie's buying his own toys. If you had your own money you could buy this bling, but you bought a popsicle from the ice cream truck. That's what you spent your money on, so it's gone now."

"And your total is forty-six eighty," the checker, Marsha, this middle-aged lady with permed hair, says.

"Oh, wait," says Evans slowly. "Uh, I have a couple coupons."

Dave watches, pretending not to, as Evans gropes in his back pocket for his wallet. With the little girl on his hip, tears running down her face openly (at least she's not screaming) and her hands still clutching a plastic package of equally plastic jewelery backed by bright pink cardboard, it's a clumsy struggle for Evans to thumb out a couple of coupons. Marsha takes them and the total drops by a dollar fifty.

"Crap," Evans mutters. "Can you... I need to get rid of a couple things, get it at forty or under. I'm on a budget."

"Take your pick," says Marsha carelessly. Dave's got it all bagged up, though, and darts a quick look at Evans.

"Listen, don't worry about it, I'll cover the rest," Dave tells Marsha. There's a line behind Evans that's staring at them all impatiently. "And the girl's thing. Throw that in there, I'll get that, too."

Evans just stares at him in that weird blank way he has.

"Just do it!" Dave says quickly.

"Okay, David, if you want," Marsha says, and takes Stacy's jewelry. "It's your paycheck."

"That's fine."

"Karofsky..." starts Evans.

"Dude, shut up. You're holding up the line."

To his credit, Evans does shut up, pays with two twenty-dollar bills (the only green Dave can see in his wallet) and lets Marsha hand Stacy her toy jewelry and him the receipt. He crunches it in his fist and doesn't look at Dave as he moves aside for the next person in line, who's a little kid with blond hair that's like an exact replica of Evans', only without the darker roots. Unperturbed by all the business transaction difficulties, the kid hands over a set of plastic ninja stars that are weirdly packaged with handcuffs as well as three dollars, plus a quarter for tax. He can't see over the counter.

"Don't run off. You have to help carry a bag," Evans says, letting the pigtailed girl down. Dave automatically picks the lightest one with the cereal and bread and offers it to her.

"You didn't have to do that," Evans says flatly, and looks at Dave with just as flat of an expression. "Now she's gonna think she can just cry whenever she goes to the store and someone will buy her toys."

"Well, excuse me for wanting to get you through the line," Dave sneers, handing paper sacks over to Evans. "Why don't you snatch that junk back from her and I'll re-stock it."

Evans gives a weary sigh and shakes his head, gaze veering to the little girl.

"I'll pay you back."

The way Evans says it is kind of resigned, but tinged in a weird way with affection as he watches Stacy squat and tuck her precious plastic jewels in the sack Dave gave her.

"Whatever. It was like six dollars or something," mutters Dave. It makes no sense. Why won't Evans just shut up, or thank him and then shut up.

"That's a lot," says Evans.

That makes even less sense.

"No, it isn't."

"Yeah, it is. Believe me." Evans' attention swerves away to the blond boy, who's bouncing up beside him. "Hey, did you get your ninja stars?"

"Yup," the kid says, all satisfied.

"Good. Now grab a couple of these bags, okay?"

"Okay," chirps the kid, and lets Dave hand him the last two bags.

"Stacy," Evans says firmly, "the guy bagging groceries bought you your jewelry. What do we say to people when they do nice things for us?"

Stacy looks at Dave owlishly, with that same weird slightly unconnected look her brother's got, and recites obediently, "Thank you."

"Sure," says Dave. He glances at Evans and adds, "But no more crying. Those are for you so you'll be good."

Evans somehow hauls his share of bags and directs the kids and lectures all the way out of the store. "Did you hear him, Piglet? You have to be good and not cry when you want stuff."

"You're such a baby," Stevie scoffs.

Boxes of Hamburger Helper are rolling toward him, so Dave says, "Paper or plastic?"

The next morning, Evans shows up at football practice. He doesn't show up _for_ practice – he just skulks around the edge of the field behind the fence and shoves his hands in his pockets, squinting because the morning sunlight's so glaring, and Dave seems to be the only one who sees him there.

For a while Dave thinks he's there to talk to Coach, give her excuses and name-drop Schuester for some suck-up points and get back in on practice. But when Beiste blows the whistle and sends them off, Evans doesn't run over to her. And he doesn't fall into step with Hudson, Puckerman, or even wheelchair kid as they roll toward the locker room. In fact, he turns away and looks down so they won't see him. As if they could miss his Backstreet Boy hair.

Dave hangs back by walking extra slow and kicking clods of damp grass.

He's starting to get the picture: this is some kind of confrontation about the six stupid dollars from the store yesterday.

Evans is a moron. This whole thing is beyond stupid.

He turns and heads toward the parking lot instead of the locker room, away from all the guys and away from Evans.

Sure enough, Evans rounds the fence, staring down at the ground as he walks steadily Dave's way. He's wearing the same thing it seems he always wears these days – that limp, over-stretched gray shirt with the red sleeves shoved up his arms due to the noon heat, jeans, scuffed up blue high tops. Dave remembers at the beginning of the year he dressed like some back-to-school catalogue model with too-new shoes, crisp bluejeans, and those kind of t-shirts where the logo was distressed to look old but the shirt was from Abercrombie or Hollister. He looks scruffy now; he used to comb his hair attentively in the mirror, and now it's just in shaggy waves like he hasn't cut it all summer and could care less.

Dave stops short at the gate to the parking lot and Evans stops short a few feet from him.

He takes a deep breath, then outs with it.

"I need your address."

"What? What the hell for?" Dave asks irritably.

"Look, I don't get my last paycheck till the day before we leave. I won't have time to pay you back for a couple of weeks. And I know you think it's stupid to quibble over six dollars and however many cents, but I owe you, and in my world, that's that. I mean, that plastic junk is going to entertain Stacy for days. She played with it all day and then fell asleep wearing it and one of the earrings got lost in her sleeping bag and she was all bent out of shape till my mom found it. They never get new toys anymore and we had to leave a bunch of their old ones, so it's important to them, and it's important to me. Don't you think I wanted to buy her that stuff?" Evans jabs at the air between them with his fingers like a preacher or the president or something. "Just write down your address for me and I'll send you the money."

Most of that doesn't process. It doesn't mean anything and Dave stares at Evans, resentful of this whole thing.

"I don't know what you're even talking about."

"I'm moving in a couple weeks," Evans says impatiently, like Dave should know this crap about him because, duh, everyone does, because he's such a shining star. "So I won't have time to get you cash before we head out of state. But I can mail it to you when we get settled into our house."

"You're – fucking ridiculous," Dave sputters.

Evans shoots him an exasperated look.

"Fine. I'll get it from someone else."

He's walking away already when Dave speaks up out of nowhere.

"Look, if you really want to pay me back, I got a better idea."

"What?"

Sweat tickles down Dave's neck and he swipes at it with one hand. "My dad's been busting my chops about mowing the yard, but I never have the energy after practice and I go to work at two and work till nine, so. How about you mow it for me and we'll call it square?"

Evans stares at him. "Are you serious?"

"Actually, he pays me ten bucks per yard, so if you wanna do one or both and earn the money to buy your sister more plastic crap, you could."

After a strange pause, Evans blinks and shakes his head like he's refusing, but instead, says, "Okay. When?"

"Uh... now's probably best, I guess. You can catch a ride with me if you want and I'll drop you back here or wherever on my way to work."

After biting down on his lip, Evans agrees, "Okay. I have to be home about then anyway."

He silently follows Dave to his used Nissan.

There's a bunch of junk in the front seat – some water bottles and protein bar wrappers and scratched up CDs – and Dave scrapes it into the foot well and tosses it in the back so Evans can ride shotgun. For a few seconds, Dave can't believe this. Evans jumped him out of nowhere in the locker room at the beginning of the year and Dave gave him a shiner... and now Evans is climbing into his car, like he never said in front of the whole glee club – and Schuester and Principal fucking Figgins – that he wanted to punch Dave's face in. Dave's giving him a ride – and a job. Hell, he already gave him a helping hand yesterday. It's uncomfortable, is what it is.

The car's absolutely sweltering inside from sitting in the parking lot all morning, making it even more uncomfortable than it already is to even just sit in the sun-baked seats, and when Dave turns it on, Lady Gaga is thumping in his speakers. He turns the volume down fast. Way down. It couldn't possibly get any more uncomfortable.

He braces himself automatically, but no smart-ass comment comes.

A few months ago Dave never would've been able to live through the humiliation of being caught listening to dance music. And he wouldn't have given Evans a ride anywhere. He would've left the guy in the parking lot. He would've let him suffer through the humiliation of coming up short in the line at the grocery store and would've used the knowledge like ammunition to blow holes in that whole righteous front. But he's... trying to be different. A little bit. And maybe not... care so much. And Evans is leaving, anyway.

Dave shoots him a furtive look and finds him sitting there with his hands on his knees (both the knees of his jeans have holes in them, and it's like he's trying to cover it up, palms cupping his bared skin) and his mouth carelessly moving along with the words of the song. 

For a second he's just shocked, because if Azimio was riding shotgun, he'd say, _What is this, man? Jessica Sampson? Turn this homosexual crap off!_

But that's right – Evans was in glee club, and they're all freaking obsessed with Lady Gaga. They all worship her and dress up as her and they all love dressing up weird, just like her, and doing stupid routines to her gay anthems. He's probably making Evans' day.

"Uh, Santana gave me this CD 'cause she's in love with me," he lies, well aware that Lopez was just dating Evans so the whole school wouldn't find out she's exclusively into carpet-munching.

"Huh. Betcha it's got Amy Winehouse on it," says Evans distantly.

They pull out of the parking lot and Dave turns the volume up another couple of notches. It feels safe enough, and it's better than weird silence.

He cuts through the neighborhood next to McKinley; the air conditioner cools off after a minute and blasts them in the face with icy relief and makes Evans' too-long hair ruffle like he's a dog with his head stuck out the window; Lady Gaga finishes and The Band Perry comes on, because this mix CD is basically made of humiliation, just like this whole thing is made of lame annoyance.

"So is this, like, music you like?" Evans asks out of nowhere, over the twinkly banjo.

"Nah, I like lots of stuff," says Dave vaguely. 

"Like, what's your favorite?"

"I don't know." Dave gives it a moment of thought. He can't say Reba. _He can't say Reba._ "Probably just... U2. Kanye."

"This is a great song," says Evans.

"It's morbid," says Dave, grumpy. He doesn't want to chat about some stupid country song twelve-year-olds are crying about in their diaries, even if it does make him think.

"Yeah, well. I don't care. Country's sad all the time," Evans says. He's gazing out the window. "I love hearing it here. It sounds better here than it does in Tennessee. You can't get away from it there. Like, I grew up on it. Everybody does whether they want to or not. But I pretty much stopped listening to it totally when I moved here. Now when I hear it... it, like... it makes me..."

He stops as Dave swerves into his driveway, eyes pulling focused onto Dave's house, and then to his lawn, all business.

"Got a lawn mower?" he asks.

He's such an idiot. Gee, Dave thought he'd have brought his own lawn mower, since they're so small and compact and easy to carry around.

"In the garage," he grunts.

The house is empty with his parents at work, nice and cool inside; Evans follows him into the foyer, and everything starts feeling uncomfortable and weird again.

He really doesn't have people over much since he's not a kid anymore and Azimio always just wants to watch _NCIS_ , and even though there's almost nowhere to go in Lima, having a driver's license at least means you don't have to stay at home... so it's weird, someone being in his house. Evans being in his house. Usually Dave showers and makes a sandwich and – depending on his mood – either collapses on the couch with it and watches _South Park_ or whatever's on Comedy Central or goes upstairs to look at porn in the absolute promise of actual privacy before he gets up to go to work.

He leads Evans through the kitchen to the garage, and Dave raises the garage door with the button on the wall.

"So... I gotta shower and shit before work, so just find me upstairs when you're done and I'll give you your money. This thing is kind of hard to push. It's not self-propelled. But once you get going it's okay."

Evans shakes his head as if all that was really weird to hear, and says stupidly, "Okay."

He wastes no time in pushing the mower out the door and learning over to turn it on and rev it to life. It takes him a couple of tries.

Dave books it upstairs nervously.

All the way through the house and up in his room he can hear the lawn mower, hear the sound moving along as Evans does long passes across the front yard. He goes to his bedroom window and moves aside a bit of ruffle on his old blue and white plaid curtains. Evans has got his ass in gear, pushing the orange-bumpered mower in front of him in a steep lean that Dave knows all too well from when he has to mow. His outstretched forearms both look sunburned, but maybe it's just the heat getting to him already. Either way there's a glint of light hair on his flushed skin, shining in the sun bright as gold or something, and Dave watches him stop and turn at the end of every row, push hard to get the mower going again, and stare forward relentlessly.

Evans has mowed most of the lawn by the time he stops right in the middle of a row and decisively whips his shirt off over his head. The gray and red pits of it are all sweaty, damp and darkened, and he tucks it awkwardly into the back of his slouchy jeans before he goes on. Oh, God, he's red all over. Tan, but red with heat, and the slope of his back is sweaty, and his jeans suddenly look really loose on him, like they don't fit him right, because they want to hang off his hips, showing off an inch of briefs all around.

Aw, man.

Dave steps back from the window and shakes his head, half angry at himself and half painfully adjusting, still, to what people – Santana, and Hummel and his midget boyfriend – have been telling him for months. This is his own fault and he knows it. He knows he did this to himself on purpose, even. Suggested it on purpose. Looked on purpose.

If he is gay... and he's not saying he is, for sure... well, he doesn't want to be like this. He didn't choose to be like this. It feels bad. It feels so crappy, to be as pathetic as he is. He tries not to think about it at all. He tries to just lose himself in bagging groceries and avoid the locker room on bad days and just ignore so it'll go away.

He sits himself with a plunk on his bed and stares. At nothing.

He zones out – or zones in, maybe, like he's staring at tiny things under a microscope but can't see what they are. He just knows they're there, and when he focuses in on them, he only sees clear for fractions of a second between blurs and then he loses focus again. The tuck of Evans' shirt against the small of his back and the rounded muscle of his shoulders. That weird glint of hair on his arms, but of course, nothing on his chest, _nothing_. Smooth. Just smooth. Even the dumb way he planted his feet and pushed with his hands stern on the mower –

"Hey."

Dave looks up slowly. Evans is standing there in his doorway, chest heaving with exertion, face and chest and arms and hands all red. His abs seem on edge, like he just worked out. His hair's swept back and sweat's rolling down either side of his face. The overwhelming smell of freshly-cut grass is sticking to him all over, including some actual bits of grass on his jeans and even near his belly button for some fucked up reason, stinking up the air around him. It smells green and sweaty and sunny and like... the locker room or something.

"Finished," says Evans, almost jauntily, though he's panting. "I did the front and the back, and I rolled the mower back into the garage."

"Dude, you reek," Dave tells him uncharitably.

"Well... it's burning up out there, sorry." Evans takes a second to grab at the shirt hanging limply from the back of his jeans and dab at his face with it.

"Take a shower," says Dave.

"I will when I get home," says Evans.

"Take one now..." Dave says slowly, so slowly it almost sounds like a question. "My shower's right there."

Evans looks over his shoulder and spots Dave's bathroom off to the side. It's a really little bathroom with blue tile and a toilet crowded really close to the bathtub, which has a mottled glass shower door installed on it. He stares at it for a few seconds, then shakes the look off.

"Thanks, but... I think I'll just take the money and the ride home. You don't even have to take me home, actually. Just drop me off back at school. A bus runs from there that takes me close to where I live."

There's something taking shape in Dave like the Terminator, shattered in pieces all over the place but sliding back together like magnetic molten steel to form something huge and unstoppable. It crashes through his senses without care. It's almost like he's been thinking of it this whole time even though he was trying to literally think about nothing. Dave's heart beats heavy in his chest, working extra hard all of a sudden.

"So I owe you like twenty bucks, right? I'll make it fifty if you take a shower."

Evans blinks. "I don't think I smell _that_ bad..."

"Fifty bucks," says Dave pointedly, like that amount is actually tempting. Maybe more? "Sixty if you leave the door open."

Evans looks at him, then looks every which way in order to try and understand what's going on, or like this is some hidden camera show and America's laughing at him.

"God," Dave grunts. His neck hurts around his voice. "Look. I'm not interested in... whatever else. Anything else. Money to shower, Evans. Money just to... do it and let me watch."

Everything seems to move slowly. Time around them, and Evans' brain, and his blinking as he stands there and looks to Dave to be seriously considering it. His mouth slips open and hangs that way and he stops looking around, instead staring seriously off into an alternate dimension in the blue wallpaper on Dave's bedroom wall.

He doesn't pull a face of disgust. 

He doesn't say, _What the fuck, dude. You really are a fag._

He doesn't even move for what seems like forever.

It couldn't be more obvious that he doesn't want to, but it also couldn't be more obvious how hurting for money he is, just considering this. Let alone shopping at the shittiest discount grocery store in town and hardly being able to pay for a paltry amount of groceries. Holy fucking shit, Dave's actually got serious leverage, if Evans isn't saying, _Screw you, Karofsky!_ and walking out right then and there.

"Like, just – I'll sit right here the whole time," Dave says, voice close to trembling. "I swear. I'm just. I think. I wonder. After PFLAG and stuff? And. You won't be here next year. It's just. You get money. And I get to look. At a guy. Without getting called gay every time I'm in the locker room for the rest of my high school life."

Evans' eyes are closed. His eyelids are practically quivering and his mouth is pained, lips flattened.

"You're not gonna tell anyone, are you," he says tonelessly.

"Dude, fuck no."

"Just so you know, I don't care if... anyone is gay," Evans continues, his eyes still resolutely shut. "I actually don't even care if you want to look. I went to an all-guys boarding school before I moved here and, just... whatever, being naked with other dudes around doesn't bother me. I really don't care. I just don't want anyone to find out. I know I'm moving, but. I don't want anyone to know I took money from you."

"Fuck, I swear, I won't tell anyone. I'm the one who has to go back to that school," Dave says, sort of hating Evans in that moment just for not having to go back to McKinley. "Why the fuck would I want anyone to know about this?"

"It's just a shower, I don't know why you'd pay me," Evans mutters, almost to himself, and then says, "Okay."

He turns for the bathroom and stalks into it.

Dave straightens up like someone's hauled him by the back of his shirt and grabs nervously for his pillow. Holy shit, Jesus Christ.

Evans turns on the light, squints up at it, glances around, then leans over the rim of the bathtub to twist the knobs on. Pipes creak and water gushes out of the faucet and into the tub, the noise loud in the small space but totally familiar to Dave from every single day of his life. He watches as Evans bends over to untie his grungy, green-tinted high tops and yank them off, along with his sweat socks, leaving him barefoot on the shower mat. He stuffs each sock into its corresponding high top, spears the sneakers under the tongue, and neatly puts them by the door. It's like watching him in the locker room, only... not... at all.

Dave sees some version of clothes coming off in the locker room out of the corner of his eye all the time; most guys on the team aren't exactly modest. Actually, sometimes, the more modest you are, the more likely you are to be ridiculed, like being shy is a fucking crime. But you still aren't supposed to look at the other guys' bodies, even when they're just standing around mostly naked.

Evans unzips his fly and strips his jeans down, quick and efficient, pulling them off each foot. They _were_ baggy on him, especially at his ankles, where bits of sticky grass have collected in the cuffs, and his legs are more slender and muscular than Dave remembered or knew or anticipated.

Evans easily has one of the best bodies on the entire team. There's that same slight shine of hair on his thighs and calves, just casually guy-ish, and the cut of his muscles are all on edge from the workout of mowing the Karofskys' lawn. He's so sweaty his briefs are sticking to him in that kind of unpleasant way underwear tends to when you're that wet, and Dave can pretty much see them sucking in at his skin, clinging to his junk. He straightens his jeans out in a couple of stern shakes, then folds them by half twice, till they're a square in his hands.

After a pause, Evans almost looks at him – almost. He turns his head slightly then quickly decides not to actually look and see Dave there, or something. Instead he lowers the toilet seat and lid and puts his jeans on top of it. Then he stands there totally still for a second, breathing out and staring down.

Dave drags his pillow closer.

Evans pushes himself back into motion, leaning to nudge switch on the faucet that trips the shower into action. The noise shifts from a loud echoed roar to a continual rain against the tub floor, and his sweaty briefs hug his ass tight, like a second skin.

 _Take them off_ , Dave's silently saying, even the mental desire clenched in his brain as if coming out from a tightly-shut jaw.

After what feels like forever, Evans finally thumbs them down his legs, clumsy as he struggles to get them off one foot, one hand bracing against the sink for balance.

He has the finest ass. Of anyone. Ever.

You could bounce a fucking dime off it.

Evans' underwear hits the floor and Dave has a second to watch the muscles in his thighs and butt flex and glisten gently with sweat as he steps over the rim of the tub into the shower. He moves quick, like he's self-conscious, aware as Dave is that this isn't the locker room.

As Dave stares, clenching like crazy at the edge of his pillow, Evans turns into the flow awkwardly, immediately covering his face with both hands and scrubbing it clutchingly. Water courses down his forearms and drips off his elbows and beats down his hair. It's all completely familiar from years of pee wee and phys. ed and hockey and football, but it's not glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. It's not forcibly ignored and willed away with a sneer or a grin. Evans has a dent where the muscle of his thigh hits his hip. Dave's spine is rigid. His dick is huge in his jeans, hidden by the pillow but throbbing against it.

After a long moment, Evans speaks up and pretty much stares into his palms, swaying slightly. "Uh. So you want me to leave the door open."

Dave blinks once, opening his mouth to correct him: _Oh, actually, I meant the... bathroom door..._ Instead, his brain smartly leaps. 

"Yeah."

He knows water's gonna get all over the place if Evans doesn't slide the glass door shut, but right then, the thought of watching the rest of the shower through a glass pane designed to fog and distort for an illusion of privacy sucks worse than the thought of water all over the bathroom floor.

Evans mouth-breathes into his hands.

"'Kay," he mutters, slowly and distinctly, then ducks his head further under the flow and lets water sluice down the back of his neck. It drips off his hair and off his nose and even his big flushed lips. Dave watches him breathe wonky, can hear the stressed exhales vaguely under the beat of water.

After a few moments, Evans looks away, over his shoulder, and spots the green bar of soap in the dish mounted in the blue-tiled wall. He flashes his ass at Dave again leaning to get it, and seems to be aware of the fact, he moves so awkwardly. His head does that uncertain jerk, betraying the fact that he totally wants to glance Dave's way, but is just refusing to, locker room blinders half on.

"It's kind of cold," Evans says, sounding weirdly guilty, just holding the soap in his hand. "Like, I can feel the A/C, I guess..."

He sniffles a bit, water dripping off the tip of his nose.

"Sorry," Dave says tightly.

After a moment, Evans just shakes his head and starts to hurriedly lather himself up, pushing Dave's Irish Spring up his left arm and across his chest in broad strokes, then switching off hands so he can do his other arm. There's not much of a lather since he's facing the spray, but Dave figures he's probably getting it over with as quick as he can.

Then Evans lifts his arm and goes for his arm pit, and something inside Dave surges in awkward response, everything from the shape of his arm curling behind his head as he stretches to the wisp of hair he scrubs at – hot. Just hot as _hell_. And he has no idea, obviously, 'cause he takes his time, building up lather that Dave can actually see, then switches off again and thrusts his other arm up. This time Dave can't see his pit, but he turns just enough that Dave can see the gentle crawl of his pubes up to his navel and hang of his dick. Water's dripping off the tip of it and it – it looks – unfair.

The breath Dave takes must be audible, 'cause Evans pauses and carefully glances at him, looking away again before they catch accidental eye contact.

"This okay?" he asks, for some reason.

"Yeah," Dave responds, trying to sound cool and wanting to punch himself in the face.

Evans drops the hand with Dave's soap clutched in it to his belly and rubs it there self-consciously.

"Do you want me to do anything, like... specific?"

Knee-jerk shock, the panicked kind he always gets when he's caught staring, makes Dave gasp, "What?"

"I dunno, you're the one that – wanted this – I just – dunno what you want... like if you want me to do something, I don't know, you have to tell me, I don't just automatically know," Evans says, the words tripping out stupidly.

"I just want you do whatever," Dave gets out through gritted teeth.

"Okay, but –"

"Wash your hair," Dave orders, agonized. Just looking at Evans get naked and soap up has gotten him more aroused than he's ever been in his life; he doesn't want it to end, and suddenly Evans doesn't remember how to shower??

He only relaxes marginally as Evans returns the soap to its dish, then reaches for the shampoo bottle in the shower caddy that's hanging from the old shower head, apparently intent on – getting paid, Dave realizes dimly, some minor understanding dawning. Evans up-ends his bottle of Pert Plus, squeezes a bit into his palm, and digs his fingers into his hair, fumblingly sticking the bottle back into its place in the caddy at the same time and making it sway against the tile with a squeak.

Then he turns around.

It's so casual, it's like he doesn't even care that he's just flashing Dave full-frontal all of a sudden, eyes squeezed shut and face mostly hidden as he reaches up with both hands to work the shampoo into all that blond hair. His abs flex and his dick sways gently as he locks into the new position, and soap runs from his pits down his ribcage. His stomach is so flat, his six-pack so tight and his hipbones so neatly packed with refined muscle, Dave hates it, hates him, would give anything to have that body or touch a body like that.

When Evans tips his head back and starts pushing the soap from his hair in falls of foam that drip and slide down his back, he just looks like some model, elbows pointed up, armpits and muscles on full display. Even his dick is somehow a pretty-boy dick. It's just so fucking perfect somehow, so beautiful.

You'd think the pretty-boy thing would be totally ruined at Evans tipping his whole face back into the spray and then spitting out a bunch of water through his wet, red lips with an audible sputter, but no. No. Even that is hot.

"Still got soap in your pits," Dave grunts inarticulately, wanting to see Evans rub at them, and he does, one after the other, kind of sensually, his eyes still shut. Dave swallows heavily and manages, "That's good."

"Is this what you wanted?" Evans asks, somehow sounding wholly clueless.

It is. And it isn't. Dave doesn't know what to say for a minute, and Evans lowers his arms, rubs at both of his shoulders and sighs hard through his nose, as if he's sore touching the muscles there.

"Dude, your hot water lasts forever."

"Yeah, we, uh... we got a new water heater last winter," Dave says, kind of glad for a safe subject and kind of suffering with the feeling that this is all about to be over with. Steam's fogged up the entire mirror and shower door, and his whole bedroom feels kind of humid from the heat pouring out of the bathroom. Feeling incompetent, he asks, "So are you, like, warm now?"

"Water's warm, but the air is cold. Giving me goosebumps," says Evans.

A flush of outrage heats Dave's face. What the hell is Evans saying something like that for? It's like he doesn't get this at all. Like he's totally clueless as to how much this is worth, totally ignorant about how long this is going to torture Dave and how often he's going to think about this guy letting him watch him shower and getting goosebumps.

Evans turns around again slowly, apparently not even slightly self-conscious anymore, and tips his face right up into the spray of water, slowly rolling his head until the water's hitting his crown instead. His hair's so long it hangs over his eyelids, dripping copiously, and what drips off his chin rolls down his stupidly flat stomach and off his dick in a steady and unnervingly arousing little stream.

Dave can only take so much of it before he's asking, out of nowhere, "Can I see you from the front."

Cooperatively, Evans tilts himself, one hand reaching out to graze the blue tile.

His hair's still plastered over his eyes, and water drips off it and spills from his philtrum and dribbles over his mouth. Even with the idiotic expression and stupid hair he's so perfect, water in perfect sheets down his perfect body. Dave stares at him for a full minute, dangerously near hyperventilating, until Evans suddenly reaches up to swipe hair from his forehead and blinks at him.

Automatically, that tight body goes from languorous to _looked at_ , and hitches up funny.

"Was that good? I mean. Did you get to... look...?"

"Yeah. If you're done, you can turn it off," Dave says, and tries not to look anymore. The feeling in his stomach is so acute, he hasn't felt anything even remotely like it since the aftershock of what he did to Hummel had kicked in and made him feel sick with mixed-up longing and hatred and embarrassment, and as close to painful as it is, he's so hard. He's so fucking hard.

Evans shuts the water off and pushes the switch that makes the final gush return to the faucet, spitting out at his feet.

The way he steps out of the tub again is careful and casual, not that Dave looks at him. He stands there dripping on the bathmat, just dripping, eying Dave for a long moment, until Dave snaps, "What?"

"My underwear's wet," Evans replies, sighing in annoyance as he kicks at his briefs, which do sound like they were sitting in a puddle. "I'll have to go commando."

Dave laughs, an injured puff of a laugh, his stomach throbbing like every breath he takes is a punch to the gut. Just the thought of Evans' dick bulging against the denim of those loose jeans makes him feel like he's about to cream his, and holy shit, he is gay. He is so gay he wants to cry.

Evans is looking at him, now, watching him almost warily.

Moving jerkily, not even in full control of himself, Dave just laughs in another painful gasp and digs, groping around his backside for his wallet, which he's mostly sitting on. After a few shaky tugs he has it out and open and is pulling out bills – twenties, fives, some ones. He doesn't even count it. He just thrusts it in Evans' direction, head bowed, and says, "Here."

After a moment, the air next to him grows warm, and Evans is standing there naked, gingerly taking the money.

"This is a hundred and thirty-eight dollars," he says after a minute.

"Whatever," grunts Dave.

Silently, Evans sections out part of the money – Dave doesn't even remember what he said he'd pay the guy – and pointedly hands the rest back to Dave. When Dave doesn't move to take it, he throws it at Dave's mattress. The bills scatter a bit in the air, landing askew across Dave's faded old white and blue plaid duvet cover.

"Why won't you just fucking take it all?" Dave busts out angrily.

Evans just stands there frowning at the money in his hand, and Dave wants to add, _And why won't you put your clothes back on??_

"I don't even want to take what you said you'd give me," Evans says shortly. "I just want to pay Rachel and Mercedes back for prom and a couple of dates, and this will cover that. I don't want to owe anyone anything. I'm not a charity case."

Dave winds up grasping his forehead, trying so, so hard not to look at Evans now that the clock is up. "God, I could punch you in the nads so easy right now. You're so damn stupid. I don't know why you don't get it."

"What don't I get?"

He can hear the scowl in Evans' voice, and the fact that he's standing there butt naked frowning and not getting it is so humiliating.

"Look, just take it all, okay," Dave whispers. "Take it or I'll track you down and mail it to you like a freak. Buy your kid sister every piece of plastic crap in the toy aisle, or buy a pair of fucking jeans that fit. You earned it. I don't know why you don't get the fucking picture. If you think any other dude at McKinley comes close to you or would ever just be cool with this, you're – blind _and_ stupid."

After a stretch of mortifying silence, Evans says, almost chipper, "Fine, I'll take it. But you're blind and stupid if you pass up the chance to watch me air-dry before I get back in those sweaty clothes. I won't even charge you extra."

Dave can't help looking.


End file.
